Traditionally, playgrounds are designed and dimensioned to their specific location, primary target users such as pre-school children, children aged 6-9, teenagers or even adults, and potentially with a specific theme or purpose such as an educational theme, a historic theme or designed with a view to maximize for example the physical or creative activity for the users. Each playground therefore is designed and constructed with a specific number of slides attached to some platforms, a number of houses or pavilions etc, and where the pillars, bars, guard panels, floor elements, spacers, coverings etc. are then adapted from different standard components or specially manufactured for that specific playground.
In order to be able to create and market a large number of different playgrounds and cover the different customer needs, the playground manufacturers therefore traditionally need to have and maintain a catalogue comprising a very large number of different parts or components, which however makes the production more costly.
Also, already established playgrounds are often difficult and expensive to expand or modify, and may be too complex and expensive to adapt or change into being oriented towards another group of users. A further disadvantage is, that a relatively large number of different components and parts makes the building of a playground relatively complicated, work intensive and time consuming as the different components and elements are assembled by a correspondingly large number of different attachment means involving different brackets, clamping bolts, screws, flanges etc.
Different ways of fastening floor panels, guard panels and the like playground elements to load carrying pillars are known. In EP0085452 the playground elements are fastened to pillars made of wood by means of clamping bolts inserted in through going bores in the pillars and supporting elements on outer faces on both sides of the pillars. In EP0462039 the elements are fastened by means of clamping rings or collars bolted together around the pillar.
Such fastening means however disadvantageously are not well suited if more elements are to be attached to the same pillar at the same height without having to somehow specially adapt the attachment means and therefore do not promote later expansion or modification of the playground. Further, all these types of attachment means disadvantageously protrude from the pillar and therefore reduces the safety of the users playing or running around the playground.